ELEANOR HALL: A senior climate scientist at the UK national weather service has criticised the proposed job cuts at the CSIRO, which will reduce the organisation's capacity to monitor climate change.

The new head of the CSIRO announced the restructure of Australia's top science body last week.

Today, climate scientists from around the world are gathering at an international conference in Melbourne.

Dr Peter Stott, the head of the climate monitoring at the UK's Met Office, spoke at the conference to our reporter Simon Lauder.

PETER STOTT: The thing that struck me and the thing that really came home listening to Dr Susan Wijffels, who was giving the initial presentation, is how important this work is, the work that is threatened with cuts.

And it's important because it's telling us about how rapidly the climate is warming and what that means for us.

And without this basic information we are not going to understand how rapidly the climate is changing and in fact Australian scientists are world leading and doing some world leading research in this area.

SIMON LAUDER: The CSIRO says its changes to its employment arrangements are to change the focus from monitoring climate change to adaption instead. Doesn't there come a time when that is what should happen?

PETER STOTT: No because in order to adapt well, you need to keep monitoring, you need to keep observing and we need to continue to develop our understanding.

And basically that's because in order to provide the services that we all know we need and in the UK for example are expanding our climates service offering because we recognise that helping people adapt is a crucial question now.

Just is happening in Australia, that's right, but what you've got to remember is you need that basic understanding and you need to continue to develop that to underpin the services that you deliver.

Because if you stop doing that underpinning science, then the services you deliver to the people who want to adapt will be worse and will not be fit for purpose.

SIMON LAUDER: You think Australia should be doing both?

PETER STOTT: You need to do both. Now this is an international effort on the underpinning science and Australia have been taking a leading role in that international effort.

But you absolutely need to do both, you need to continue to do the underpinning science and then you need to continue to work to inform people and answer peoples questions based on those underpinning science, but applying it to their questions.

If you don't do both of those things then you are not going to serve the people who need that advice.

SIMON LAUDER: And what are the risks of not doing both? What are the risks of taking resources away from climate change monitoring and putting them towards adaptation?

PETER STOTT: Well if we stop monitoring the climate and we stop seeking also to understand how sensitive our climate system is then the risk really is that the information being provided, which may involve all sorts of fancy websites and fancy ways of delivering that information, fundamentally that information will not be strong enough to support the decision-making.

It does actually come all the way back to some of the basic science of this being done.

So to give you an example, that what we've heard from Dr Susan Wijffels this morning is the really ground breaking work that she and her team have been doing understanding some of these fingerprints of the way that human influence is affecting the ocean.

Understand - use those intellectual tools - that understanding of the fingerprints develop our monitoring capability and then we will understand much more about how rapidly our climate system is changing.

Because after all, over 90 per cent of the additional heat going into the climate system is going into our oceans. Understand that and then you understand much better about some of those risks in terms of heat waves, floods and droughts and so on.

SIMON LAUDER: And the CSIRO's Dr Wijffels is one of the leading climate change scientists. Australia has many leaders in that area, do you think that is now at risk?

PETER STOTT: Well I think there is a risk, if there isn't a means to support this research, that is a risk yes, and you know, likewise in the UK.

As a scientist in the UK, we do depend on the support for some of this underpinning science and some of this intellectually challenging science to work together in international collaborative groups and that's something Dr Susan Wijffels was also talking about.

Some of the collaboration that we have between Australia and the UK in a talk this morning for example, if you don't underpin that and support that then it is at risk, because you know leading scientists with reputations can go elsewhere and work elsewhere of course.

SIMON LAUDER: And you're from the UK Met Office of course, are you worried about future collaborations on climate science now?

PETER STOTT: It is worrying yes, and I certainly hope that ways can be found to support this research on an ongoing basis because of its importance.

You know we heard this morning about some of this collaborative work that's being done and we each depend on each other in this field and we each bring our particular skills and our particular specialities and then we work together in teams internationally and that's how we push forward the science, ultimately for the service of people in Australia, for people in the UK and elsewhere who want to understand climate risks and how they are changing in the future.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Dr Peter Stott, the head of the climate monitoring at the UK's Met Office. He was speaking at a conference in Melbourne to Simon Lauder.